It must be quite difficult trying to put to rest a movie character that has given you worldwide distinction. Well, actor Paul Hogan knows this first hand when his Mick "Crocodile" Dundee burst onto the big screen nearly fifteen years ago. Hogan took the movie scene by storm with his charming characterization of Crocodile Dundee, a curious adventurer from the treacherous Australian Outback who encountered a bewildering, foreign thriving world beyond his own familiar settings. He's back to roam among the unfamiliar surroundings in Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, the tired and unecessary third installment to the Crocodile Dundee movie series. What was so spontaneous and revealing when Mick Dundee first confronted "modern day" society turned out to be a riotous experience in the original film. But two films later, this fish-out-of-water gimmick wears thin and starts to get redundant. There's really no where that Hogan can take this character and make him any more inquisitive and humorously misinformed. What's next for Hogan and the filmmakers...Crocodile Dundee Takes On Las Vegas? In this day and age where Americans are more keen to the exotic Outback thanks the to immensely popular reality television phenom Survivor: The Outback and last year's Olympic Games being played in the glorious city of Sydney, Australia, somehow we can dismiss Hogan's Crocodile Dundee as a passe' aging posterboy for The Land Down Under and deem his comedic theatrical antics as irrelevant at this point.
This latest premise has Mick and his companion-in-love Sue Charleton (Linda Kozlowski) invading the make believe land of Southern California when Sue is called to replace a departed colleague who recently died under questionable circumstances. Joining Mick and Sue's field trip to LA is their own little reptile-of-an-offspring named Mikey (Serge Cockburn). Mikey, it appears, is a chip-off-the-ol' block like his old man Mick Dundee. And so the whole proceedings has a clueless Mick playing babysitter to his own little Crocodile Dundee as they both roam Beverly Hills while taking on the ridiculousness of that city's elitist proclivities, much like the Clampetts did as hillbillies in their 60's sitcom on American TV. The inferred joke, if you will, tells us that Crocodile Dundee is up against the wilds of the pretentious showbiz glitterland as compared to his own rough-and-tumble homeland. The gags are routinely distributed with the flair of a defective boomerang. Scenes such as an anxious Mick taking out a knife and stabbing a fake reptile as he and his son take a ride through a wildlife amusement park is flat out tame and mindless. And the bit with the unfamiliarity of cellphones is clumsily realized and certaintly doesn't ring true (at this point, even the Flintstones would know what a cell phone is!).
And so everything seems to exasperate Mick Dundee--from the cluttered LA freeways to the self-indulgent and opportunistic Hollywood execs. After encountering the "jungle" of New York (for which Mick tackled that experience in his previous outing), why would he be so ignorant and misguided about the peculiarities of a happening town like LA?). The world is an everchanging entity onto itself so why is Crocodile Dundee so dense as to be so shocked by its sophistication or technology? Quite simple...this advancement of the technology age gives Hogan an excuse to exploit the befuddlement (and re-emergence) of his most successful film character. Hollywood has been satirized more effectively and convincingly in other mediocre comedies that try to explain this city's trendy, nonchalant vibes. For this, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles is as arbitrary as Aborigine body paint.
Director Simon Wincer wants to convey a certain kind of sympathy for the film's protagonist Mick "Crocodile" Dundee by showing us how the world may have passed him by. But to believe that a clever-minded chap like Dundee is thick-headed about the world around him is to believe that you don't know that touching the sun's surface can burn you. Come on now...just how dense is Dundee? Or the movie audience for that matter? It's obvious that Mick is on the ball, especially since he realizes that his own son needs exposure to the so-called evolving world outside the Outback that Mick is so in the dark about. Even Dundee uses his savvy to help out in Sue's investigation concerning the death of her newspaper's former bureau chief. If anything, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles feels like an opportunity to cash in on its previous blockbuster clout. Nothing more, nothing less. Way back when, Hogan's Croc Dundee was an Aussie rogue who paid an unexpected, albeit delightful, visit to a world we all considered sinister and unpredictable within our own comprehension. But now we have grown up and accepted this complicated universe of ours as something we all need to assimilate with. Too bad that unimaginative filmmakers, and an overstaying-your-welcome movie icon Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, doesn't understand this very same concept in this needlessly, ponderous fish-out-of-water farce.
Frank rates this film: ** stars
